Junya Watanabe / Spring 2012 RTW

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It felt almost willfully odd and disorienting to be plunged into complete darkness at 9:30 a.m. on a blindingly glorious Saturday in Paris—audience members literally had to grope their way to their seats. This enlightening passage from last Sunday’s Japan Times Online might explain what the habitually silent Junya Watanabe could have been saying by keeping the lights off:

“Motivated by fear of rolling blackouts and serious power cuts, people pulled together to reduce energy usage . . . this cutting back was an expression of compassion for all those who lost so much because of the earthquake, tsunami and radiation. Over-indulging on electricity when others had lost so much seemed unacceptable . . . The startling reduction of one-fifth of the country’s electric activities was also a kind of silent protest. Even while protest marches and rallies against nuclear power took place in Shinjuku, Meiji Park and other venues over the summer, the quieter protest in the form of electricity conservation shows that people understand that maybe they do not really need so much electricity if it means that a nuclear power plant accident can end up radiating people’s farmland, pushing them out of their homes and upending children’s schools.”

It would be just like Junya Watanabe, who has always been averse to explaining anything, to create a “quiet protest” as the backdrop to the collection he designed in Tokyo in the aftermath of the earthquake and meltdown of the Fukushima power plant. Protest and anger didn’t register in the clothes, though. Perhaps this designer—who has often delved into the canon of aggro-punk street style—felt that a gentler response would be more healing. Some of it seemed to come out of respect for nature—flowers embroidered into a long sequence of lace handkerchief-point dresses—and some of it was apparently played purely for fun, like the layers of bouncing organza ruffles bursting from the armholes of cropped biker jackets.

Introverted and isolated as Watanabe may appear to be, he is (quietly, of course), highly skilled at channeling current ideas into the types of clothing that have earned him a following. So this season, he’s brilliantly funneled the trend for tulle into a set of military utility jackets as well as playing on lace and signaling that, yes, he, too, has caught the feeling for something Spanish (those frilled-up bikers being an exuberant hybrid of flamenco-matador dressing and classic streetwear.)

All this rolled on without any overt commentary on the impact of this year’s disasters. Then, as the last model took the runway, the music cut out. She walked in silence, and when she turned to face the audience, the lights went out again. Watanabe didn’t want to take any applause—and when he was dragged out from backstage by the chairman of Condé Nast International, he still had no words. Perhaps he feels discomfiture about being a “mere” designer in a country rocked by such tragedy. But his presentation led to a deeply relevant train of thought.